Roman Opalka

A close-up of Opalka’s painting taken at the Neue Nationalgalerie exhibition

It would have been interesting if I had known this artist when I was writing my thesis on Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. It reminded me of the Grandmother in the novel whose autobiography was 2000 blank pages pressed through a typewriter with the space button. Opalka’s painting as a form of writing starts with the number 1 to infinity. He gradually made the grey background with each painting 1% lighter so that eventually the painting would become a blank canvas. Time = nothingness